Slightly Fancier

Even Fancier

Get the code with git. Use make to build the docs and do other stuff.
If you plan on hacking on npm, make link is your friend.

If you've got the npm source code, you can also semi-permanently set
arbitrary config keys using the ./configure --key=val ..., and then
run npm commands by doing node bin/npm-cli.js <command> <args>. (This is helpful
for testing, or running stuff without actually installing npm itself.)

If that's not fancy enough for you, then you can fetch the code with
git, and mess with it directly.

Installing on Cygwin

No.

Uninstalling

So sad to see you go.

sudo npm uninstall npm -g

Or, if that fails,

sudo make uninstall

More Severe Uninstalling

Usually, the above instructions are sufficient. That will remove
npm, but leave behind anything you've installed.

If you would like to remove all the packages that you have installed,
then you can use the npm ls command to find them, and then npm rm to
remove them.

To remove cruft left behind by npm 0.x, you can use the included
clean-old.sh script file. You can run it conveniently like this:

npm explore npm -g -- sh scripts/clean-old.sh

npm uses two configuration files, one for per-user configs, and another
for global (every-user) configs. You can view them by doing:

npm config get userconfig # defaults to ~/.npmrc

npm config get globalconfig # defaults to /usr/local/etc/npmrc

Uninstalling npm does not remove configuration files by default. You
must remove them yourself manually if you want them gone. Note that
this means that future npm installs will not remember the settings that
you have chosen.